“For Angus,” she said. “May your spirit live young all the days of the world,Atuk.”
The fiddle sprang to life at her touch, and she played while she wept silent tears. A tune of love and nostalgia, its mournful notes flooded the moonlit pathways. The flames of her campfire flickered in rhythm to the song, and Elsbeth closed her eyes, lost to the music and the bright images of herchildhood.
The tune segued into another and then another, and her memories changed, turning once more to Alaric and that blissful summer nearly a decadeearlier.
Despite her initial resistance,she’d fallen for him. He’d won her, not with florid compliments or boasts of great deeds, but with things more prosaic. After the first reluctant dinner invitation, Alaric had returned a half dozen times to eat with her andAngus.
Elsbeth was taciturn at first, content to let conversation between Angus and the bard flow around her while she served their meal. The fact he not only ate her food, but did so with gusto, astounded her and delighted Angus. He didn’t look like he was starving, and starvation was the only reason she could think of that might inspire someone to wolf down her cooking with suchenthusiasm.
He was at ease in their humble home. Other, wealthier families had hosted him on numerous occasions, their houses far more gracious and sumptuous than Angus’s. Alaric, however, had sat with her grandfather at their beaten table, shared a smoke, told his fascinating tales, and listened, enraptured, as Elsbeth played her fiddle, looking as if he wished to be no other place but withthem.
As much as she hated to admit it, he fascinated her. No idler content to find a shady spot and watch as others worked, he often volunteered his help and labored in the fields and on the threshing floors. Once, at a barn raising, a brawl almost broke out between the unmarried village women over who would sit near him at lunch. Elsbeth hadn’t joined in the fray, satisfied to admire him fromafar.
She invited him for supper several times at Angus’s urgings. Alaric accepted immediately, though his smile wasrueful.
“And you, Beth,” he said once. “Do you want methere?”
Elsbeth didn’t pretend coyness. She disliked it in others. “Yes,” she replied before walkingaway.
“You warm my heart with your eagerness, Beth,” he called after her in a voice filled withlaughter.
And you frighten mine with your charm, storyteller, she thoughtdarkly.
Their dinners had slowly transformed. Her food was still burned or undercooked. Alaric still had two or more helpings. She played her fiddle for him afterward, but he no longer shared a pipe with Angus. Instead, he escorted her around the village’s perimeter, making idle talk as they admired the summermoon.
The villagers, ever curious of their neighbors’ doings, soon talked of the bard’s courtship of Angus Weaver’s granddaughter. And it was a courtship of sorts. Evening chats soon turned to kissing in the concealing shadows of the copse of woods that butted up to the village. Tentative at first, she’d finally shed her reserve and returned Alaric’s desire with a passion long-hidden.
Elsbeth, on the cusp of spinsterhood by Ney standards, had experienced her share of kissing and more, but none like these. Alaric kissed her with his body and his soul, not just his mouth. He was generous with his affections but not overwhelming, taking only what she gavehim.
“You are too good to be true,” she teased him one evening as they sat together on a flat rock bordering the shallow creek that gave the village its name. Elsbeth savored the warmth within the circle of his arms. His chest was a solid wall against her back, his heartbeat a faint and soothinglullaby.
“You mean I didn’t live down to your first assumptions.” His voice was somber, lacking any reciprocal teasing in itstones.
Elsbeth half turned so she could see his face. Shadow and moonlight chased each other across his features, casting them in high relief. He stared at her with eyes that drank thelight.
“No,” she said and cringed. “You didn’t. I was wrong to judge like that and hostile to you when I had no reason to be.” She stroked his neck, the hollow of his throat. “I hope you’ll forgive me. I convicted you on the behavior of bards who came before you. They’re a faithless lot. You’re not likethem.”
His mouth thinned to a grim line. “Yet I follow their path, Beth. I sit here with a village woman in my arms, one with no protector except an old man with signs of bone sickness.” Alaric slid a finger under her chin and tilted her face to him. “I won’t lie or give you pretty words dressed in ribbons or dipped in honey. You’ll have my honesty.” His breath caressed her cheeks as his fingertips stroked her throat. “I want you,” he whispered, the declaration as fervent as any prayer. “Want to make love to you, want to mount you here on this rock, feel your legs around me as I takeyou.”
All the air in her lungs vanished, and her heartbeat knocked a war drum’s rhythm against her breastbone. She stared at him, into his eyes, gray as a rainyday.
His harsh expression relaxed into more rueful lines. “I’d tell you I loved you if I thought you’d believe me. But loving you won’t keep me here, no matter how much I wish it otherwise. I can only be what you first condemned me with in your eyes—a man wanting a woman so badly he can taste her, and no future to offer her. I will leave Ney-by-the-Water in twodays.”
Elsbeth closed her eyes, despair, desire, anger and elation—all of them rushing through her at once. His words, seductive in their bare honesty, made her ache. She wanted those things too, wanted more than to recline here in his arms and trade kisses. Her elation over his oblique reference to loving her crumbled under the knowledge that she had only two more days withhim.
The fates are laughing now, she thought. Elsbeth Weaver, so proud, so sure of her own heart and intelligence that she’d not be taken by the smooth charm of a handsome wanderer, had fallen deeply in love with one. Knowingly, willingly. And she didn’t regret it for amoment.
She turned fully in his arms so that she faced him on her knees. “You’re not like them,” she repeated. “You’ve seduced me with your honesty, not your lies.” She smiled when his eyes flared. “You can’t give me a future, but are you willing to give me twodays?”
He didn’t return her smile, but his hand rode her back, pressing until she fell against him. The intensity in his voice made her shiver. “We can live a lifetime in two days, Beth.” He stared at her “Are you sure aboutthis?”
“Yes.”
She kissed him, savoring the curve of his lips on hers, the taste of his mouth, sweetened by the mulled wine she’d served with dinner. Alaric groaned and parted his lips, deepening the kiss. Elsbeth sucked on his tongue, passing hers along his teeth and the roof of his mouth. She wanted his taste, his scent, all of him. Her hips rocked, setting a slow grind against his stiff cock. She moaned into his mouth, and he echoed thesound.
A flurry of hands and half-muttered instructions accompanied the toss of clothing onto the rock and some even into the creek. Naked, Elsbeth held Alaric’s head close as he suckled her breast, his tongue laving her nipple in varied strokes before turning his attention to the other breast. She writhed in his lap and combed her fingers through his hair, loving the feel of silky locks on her bareskin.
She returned his caresses, coaxing out deep groans when she teased his small nipples with delicate kisses and the swipe of her tongue on their tips. His fingers dug into her hips when she nibbled the length of his collarbones and the strong column of hisneck.
